Sugar cane bagasse is excellent organic material of fuel for boilers that can substitute other types of energy providing fuels in sugar mills. However, its disadvantage is that is has a high humidity content and for this reason different types of drying equipment have been designed, some with a sophisticated design and others that are not very efficient.
The best known dryers for this type of operation are those with a type of rotating drum, pneumatic transport, fluidized bed and exposure to the heat of the sun; the first three provide direct or indirect contact between the material to be dried and the combustion gases.
American patente U.S. Pat. No. 4,326,470 protects a pneumatic type of bagasse dryer; it describes a design in which combustion gases from the boiler are used and is characterized because it decreases the amount of humidity of the bagasse by 10 to 15% and permits an increase in steam production in the boiler of between 13.5 and 15.45% respectively. It can be seen from this system that heat exchange times are short, meaning that the decrease in the percentage of humidity can be no greater; it also has the disadvantage of high energy consumption in transporting the material.